A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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SECOND

Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

As you say, it's a game won by numbers. The People that would be positively effected by this outnumber those that don't by a very large margin. The problem is, nobody ever talks about it.

Sure, they bitch about Social Security for many different reasons, but never talk about what I'm talking about specifically. I never got this idea from anyone, because nobody ever talks about it. I just thought of it.
. . .

I like that you're not disagreeing with me about the merits of this idea anymore, only the probability that it could ever happen. I don't think that having the correct amount of Democratic seats would do it, because they never talk about it either. I think the first step in getting this to happen would be to raise awareness of it.

Texans talk about politics the same way they talk about sports: "My team's winning. Your team sucks." That's about as deep as it goes in politics for the masses, the lower 99%. There is no talk about political policy. Nothing about consequences. It's all feelings and gossip. Maybe that's why crappy political policies can exist?

But when the 1 percenters talk to each other or, and this is where things start getting effective, lobbyists for the 1% talk to politicians, they don't talk in vague generalities and emotion. They can make a politician squirm if he spouts inconsequential nonsense like a child who didn't prepare for a quiz. Save that bluster for TV and the newspaper reporters.

I just answered my own question about crappy political policy. Whatever policy is important to the 1% is pushed slowly and resolutely toward making sense by the 1%. Whatever the 99% want will be pushed hither and yon by the turbulent emotions of the 99% during election season. And that is where the number game comes in. What is the emotion that the majority are feeling on election day? That makes the voter King For A Day. But when election season is over, the 1% will be pushing whoever got elected, either D or R politician, for things to go their way on what they care about. Slow and steady wins for the 1%.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, January 18, 2018 8:21 PM

Well... right.

Hence why nobody ever talks about this issue. I know I'm smart, but surely I can't be the first person to ever have this idea. Ain't nothing new under the sun.

That's why it's been kept under a boulder.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

JO753

Friday, January 19, 2018 12:19 PM

Soundz like a great idea, 6.

I'm starting to think YOU shoud rite the TAX paje on my site!

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, January 19, 2018 2:10 PM

Thanks J0 :)

I'm down. I actually mentioned something about that a while back but you must not have seen it. (I'm not sure if you also didn't see the part I added in a later post about how this SS tax reform would not only give a %15.3 raise to all employees making under $100k, but would do so without raising the bottom line at all for companies providing goods and services that employ a majority of the people who would benefit from it... so a gallon of milk wouldn't cost 5 bucks a month later as it might if we just raised the minimum wage by 4 or 5 bucks. I also said that we should then immediately tie the minimum wage to inflation so that's never a problem again).

We can't forget the ideas about replacing homeowners insurance with mortgage insurance and helping offset any deficits this might create by using lottery earnings and making where that money goes completely visible to the public as well. ;)

Do Right, Be Right. :)

SECOND

Friday, January 19, 2018 5:59 PM

While 6ixStringJack is adjusting Social Security tax on wages: You wouldn't put all your 401K money into US Treasury bonds, would you? Doing that would lower your retirement income. But since the beginning of the Social Security program, all securities held by the trust funds have been issued by the Federal Government. Could you please fix that by investing in something that pays higher interest?
www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/investheld.html

SECOND

Sunday, January 21, 2018 6:31 PM

Unexceptionalism: A Primer
By E. L. Doctorow, April 28, 2012
www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/unexceptionalism-a-primer.ht
ml

To achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:

PHASE ONE

If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate of your choice as president.

If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a nonterrorist country. Despite the loss or disablement of untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its results will be indeterminate.

Using the state of war as justification, order secret surveillance of American citizens, data mine their phone calls and e-mail, make business, medical and public library records available to government agencies, perform illegal warrantless searches of homes and offices.

Take to torturing terrorism suspects, here or abroad, in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Unilaterally abrogate the Convention Against Torture as well as the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. Commit to indeterminate detention without trial those you decide are enemies. For good measure, trust that legislative supporters will eventually apply this policy as well to American citizens.

Suspend progressive taxation so that the wealthiest pay less proportionately than the middle class. See to it that the wealth of the country accumulates to a small fraction of the population so that the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially.

By cutting taxes and raising wartime expenditures, deplete the national treasury so that Congress and state and municipal legislatures cut back on domestic services, ensuring that there will be less money for the education of the young, for government health programs, for the care of veterans, for the maintenance of roads and bridges, for free public libraries, and so forth.

Deregulate the banking industry so as to create a severe recession in which enormous numbers of people lose their homes and jobs.

Before you leave office add to the Supreme Court justices like the ones who awarded you the presidency.

PHASE TWO

If you’re one of the conservative majority of a refurbished Supreme Court, rule that corporations, no less than human beings, have the right under the First Amendment to express their political point of view. To come to this judgment, do not acknowledge that corporations lack the range of feelings or values that define what it is to be human. That humans can act against their own interest, whereas corporations cannot act otherwise than in their own interest. That the corporation’s only purpose is to produce wealth, regardless of social consequences.

This decision of the court will ensure tremendous infusions of corporate money into the political process and lead to the election in national and state legislatures of majorities of de facto corporate lobbyists.

PHASE THREE

Given corporate control of legislative bodies, enact laws to the benefit of corporate interests. For example, those laws sponsored by weapons manufacturers wherein people may carry concealed weapons and shoot and kill anyone by whom they feel threatened.

Give the running of state prisons over to private corporations whose profits increase with the increase in inmate populations. See to it that a majority of prisoners are African-American.

When possible, treat immigrants as criminals.

Deplete and underfinance a viable system of free public schools and give the education of children over to private for-profit corporations.

Make college education unaffordable.

Inject religious precepts into public policy so as to control women’s bodies.

Enact laws prohibiting collective bargaining. Portray trade unions as un-Amer

JO753

Monday, January 22, 2018 12:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
While 6ixStringJack is adjusting Social Security tax on wages: You wouldn't put all your 401K money into US Treasury bonds, would you? Doing that would lower your retirement income. But since the beginning of the Social Security program, all securities held by the trust funds have been issued by the Federal Government. Could you please fix that by investing in something that pays higher interest?

Soundz risky. Wut woud hav happened in 08 with that plan?

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

JO753

Monday, January 22, 2018 12:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Unexceptionalism: A Primer...
PHASE ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR

Well, thats wun way.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

1KIKI

Monday, January 22, 2018 4:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Unexceptionalism: A Primer
By E. L. Doctorow, April 28, 2012
www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/unexceptionalism-a-primer.ht
ml

It's interesting that the 'primer on unexceptionalism' was written in 2012. In 2009, 2010, and 2011 democrats controlled both Congress and the White House. You'd almost think some of the diatribe was pointed at democrats, who twiddled their thumbs while shoveling money at the banks, failed to investigate and prosecute fraud, expanded the surveillance state, prosecuted more whistleblowers than previous administration COMBINED, 'intervened' in Libya, failed to close GITMO ...

"Starting January 2009, at the beginning of the 111th Congress, in the month that Barack Obama was inaugurated president, the House of Representatives was made up of 257 Democrats and 178 Republicans. There is no question that Democrats had total control in the House from 2009-2011."

HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?

SECOND

Monday, January 22, 2018 5:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

It's interesting that the 'primer on unexceptionalism' was written in 2012. In 2009, 2010, and 2011 democrats controlled both Congress and the White House. You'd almost think some of the diatribe was pointed at democrats, who twiddled their thumbs while shoveling money at the banks, failed to investigate and prosecute fraud, expanded the surveillance state, prosecuted more whistleblowers than previous administration COMBINED, 'intervened' in Libya, failed to close GITMO ...

"Starting January 2009, at the beginning of the 111th Congress, in the month that Barack Obama was inaugurated president, the House of Representatives was made up of 257 Democrats and 178 Republicans. There is no question that Democrats had total control in the House from 2009-2011."

And it is extremely NOT interesting that 1kiki claims Democrats are failures because the Republicans left them with failures to solve. There are no quick political cures in two years; there is only moving slowly away from a mess created by Republicans, a mess the GOP did NOT want fixed. Closing GITMO was one of your examples of failure. Don't you remember how the GOP fought 8 years the Democrats over that? The GOP loves and protects every mistake it every made and fights the Democrats to the death to keep the mistakes alive.

One of the examples of the contrast between Democratic politicians and GOP politicians was the item on unexceptionalism that goes like this: “If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a nonterrorist country. Despite the loss or disablement of untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its results will be indeterminate.”

The contrast is exactly this: Bush goes into Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden, which turns into the longest war in American history. Obama goes into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden (note well it is the same goal, repeated) which does not turn into a war with Pakistan despite the CIA’s and the Pentagon’s unstoppable blundering.

The stupid Pentagon and Seal Team Six and the incompetent CIA did their very best to make Zero Dark Thirty into a flaming fiasco. They crashed a helicopter, murdered the most valuable terrorism intelligence asset (Osama bin Laden) rather than bringing him in for interrogation, Seal Team members were court-martialed and sued for writing books they shouldn’t have, a vaccination program in Pakistan was shutdown because the CIA used it as a cover, Pakistanis who helped the US were executed because of the CIA, etc. Obama had to use the same over-priced, less than competent military and CIA that Bush used, but Obama knew he couldn’t depend on them to not screw things up.

The Democratic politicians fight a war differently than GOP politicians: The Republican acts as if the field work is in the hands of the best people in the world. The Democrat knows the people carrying out his policy in the field will do a terrible job in many varied ways that neither Congress nor the White House could predict because the military and CIA are full of over-confident morons and under-achievers, but what can you do about that? Fire everybody and restart the US? No. A Democratic President can’t do that or even say it in public because the GOP would throw a running wormy rabid-dog fit.

www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/world/death-of-osama-bin-laden-fast-facts/index
.html

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